The movie Battleship Potemkin is said to be one of the best montage sequence movies ever made and when the movie was finished (1925) it got a lot of government attention and was banned by the bored of censorship. But when it was shown to the public in 1954 it was voted as one of the best movies in the history of cinema. But exactly, what made it such a controversial movie that at the time it had to be banned, and how did people react to the movie when they saw it?Firstly to fully appreciate the movie, we need to travel back in history to understand how the government was run and how people lived. In the early 1900's Russian held a strong empire, the Bolshevik (majority), the every ...view middle of the document...
"The French police burned every copy they could find, in Pennsylvania it was banned on the grounds that it `gives American sailors a blue-print as to how to conduct a mutiny', and in Europe one censor tied a knot in Eisenstein's Marxist dialectic with a sinister warning to any would-be revolutionaries: every scene that occurred after the Odessa steps sequence was cut." Now of days this movie wouldn't even be an issue but for back then making a movie about a revolution, made a lot of governments scared that this movie would influence its people to start a revolution and cause a major uproar. Watching the movie now doesn't have the same impact it of had back then. Now of days, to understand better this movie it would be better to watch this movie knowing what happened during the Russian Revolution period.When battleship Potemkin came out its only competition was Douglas Fairbanks "Robin Hood". In its four weeks Potemkin drew in a crowd of 300 000 people. The theatre that showed the movie even decorated its main hall with battleship motifs, even the people that worked at the theatre dressed up as naval officers. Not enough copies of the movie were made, which caused major turmoil in the theatre business because most major cities in Europe and Russia wanted to show the film. Just about a year and a half later its released, Battleship Potemkin was summated to the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification), "The censor chosen to view the film was Col. J.C Hanna DSO, who had joined the BBFC 4 years earlier after a distinguish military career..." (R. Taylor 113). Hanna not having too much sympathy toward "artsy" cinema and didn't like the idea of people rebelling against the homeland security. Thus the movie was banned for public showing in the entire United Kingdom. The movie was sparsely shown in Russia and Europe, not many people got to see this amazing piece of work. After the ban was lifted in 1954, the movie was watched by many famous directors, every one of them agreed that this movie was considered the best movie of its time. In 1958 at the Brussels world fair it was voted as the best movie montage of all time. This movie has been shown to millions of people and is used in classes to show students how we now have montage sequences in our everyday movies.Russian Montage had new meaning after this movie was made. The famous Odessa step sequence was forever remembered as the most famous Russian montage Scene. It used a lot of shot juxtaposition that many famous directors use in today's movies. Almost everyone that saw the Odessa think it really happened, but in fact Eisenstein made it all up, he just wanted to show a scene which perfectly described what he wanted the viewers to see, the difference in class. "The fact that Eisenstein tells the story purely from the perspective of the positive characters makes the audience more willing to identify with them. He tries to get the audience to live through this historical moment as he believes t...
